Summer Lovin'

I love, love, love my new look! What do you guys think? Very Summery, right?

I'm quite in love with summer tonight. Does it show? Summer is all of my favorite things, except Christmas. But that's good because the wintertime needs something uplifting, too, you know?

Summer is my favorite foods - crawfish boils, homemade ice cream, oysters on the half, and Perfect Garden Vegetables (notice how I give respect with capital letters). Tomatoes. Tomatoes. I could write yet another Ode to Tomatoes right now, but I'll spare you.

Summer is my favorite drinks - Iced Sweet Tea, Chilly Cold Beer straight from my rusty cooler, Frozen Margaritas, Late Afternoon Vodka & Tonics that take many witty cocktail napkins. My favorite one shows a 50s era woman in a button-up pink dress leaning against a tree. She's smiling coyly. The caption reads, "She had not yet decided whether to use her powers for good or for evil."

Summer is my children - at the Beach, in the yard, on a road trip, in fountains, on bikes, in parks, at festivals, together.

Summer holds my favorite memories from my less than illustrious childhood and not-yet-adulthood. I went to summer camp at Camp DeSoto atop Lookout Mountain in Alabama. I went for a month for 6 years. LOVED it! It was hot and dusty and humid and comfortable and safe and fun and perfect and wanna hear me sing some songs?

Summer was the time for my tragically dysfunctional Southern family to take a FABULOUS trip. We drove across Canada once. Good Lord. We had run-ins with bears, massive sheep and elk that wouldn't get off the road for the goddamn Pope. There was snow (we Mississippians don't do well with that.) There was a grumpy customs agent who didn't think much of our Georgia peaches. My now ex step-dad drove the rental van into a pole in a bank parking lot. I got new L.A. Gear high-tops because they were affordable in Canada. My now ex step-sister did not and threw a massive fit, so my mother's sister threw one of the aforementioned peaches at her in the aforementioned rental van. Good times.

Summer is my favorite boyfriend. Lance. It was the summer I worked at my dad's Country Club as a lifeguard. When I say it was my dad's what I mean is that he was the Golf Pro at the course. It was his job. Lance was a lowly cart boy, and a county school kid, at that. He was adorable. Totally smitten with me. I was the boss's daughter, 16 with a rock hard newly transformed body in a brand new bright red racerback suit and tortoise shell sunglasses. My goodness. He was tripping on himself. He drove a T-top Camaro with only the primer on it. The tape deck responded better to a good swift whack on the dash than to the buttons and knobs. He cried a little the first time we heard "Beaches of Cheyenne," the big hit of that summer. To this day, he's the sweetest boy I ever knew.

"If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance."

Go get some sweet kisses, girls. Summer's here.